Original | Odaily Star Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author | Azuma (@azuma_eth)

The decentralized Perp DEX project Lighter (LIT) has shown a strong performance in its coin price recently.

According to OKX market data, as of today at 14:30, LIT is reported at 2.65 USDT, with a 24-hour increase of 19.4%. Calculated from the historical low of 0.78 USDT at the beginning of April, LIT has achieved a strong rebound of over 3 times in the past three months.

Considering Lighter's recent developments in regulation, products, and tokens, the strong coin price performance of LIT can be attributed to the result of multiple fundamental narratives resonating simultaneously.

Regulatory Progress: The Narrative Advantage of "Domestic" Exchanges

The main thread of Lighter's recent strength is its rapid clarification on the regulatory path.

This is particularly evident when comparing Lighter with its biggest competitor Hyperliquid (HYPE), which has long held a leading position in the on-chain Perp DEX space, but its offshore attribute is often seen as a potential regulatory risk, especially in the context of tightening U.S. regulatory frameworks, which signifies persistent policy uncertainty.

In contrast, Lighter's positioning leans more towards being a "trading infrastructure that is internal to the U.S. regulatory system." As a project with a U.S. background, Lighter is proactively embedding itself within the regulatory framework to gain a new "compliance premium."

In the Q1 investor conference call at the beginning of April, Lighter founder and CEO Vladimir Novakovski clearly stated, the company has initiated the application process for an on-chain derivatives trading license in the U.S. Vladimir remarked, "It is unrealistic to serve traditional financial institutions like Citadel without a license."

Yesterday, Novakovski again stated on X that he has become a member of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Innovation Advisory Committee. The significance of this in the market context far exceeds its superficial title. The CFTC's Innovation Advisory Committee essentially serves as an "institutional buffer" between regulators and market participants, responsible for providing policy advice to the CFTC in the intersection of technology, law, and finance. Under the current regulatory trend, this new identity for Vladimir means that Lighter is not just "adapting to regulation," but can participate in the early stages of rule-making.

Additionally, there is another point to note: the new Federal Reserve Chair Waller disclosed in the financial information published prior to his appointment that he holds a certain amount of LIT, although this does not mean Waller will leverage his authority to do anything, this "potential policy network connection" will still enhance the market's pricing imagination regarding Lighter's regulatory resource advantages.

New Channel Development: Deep Integration with Robinhood

Apart from regulatory progress, the second key variable for Lighter's recent explosion is the opening of new distribution channels, particularly the deep integration with Robinhood.

Last week, Robinhood and Lighter jointly announced that the former's Robinhood Wallet now supports the native Perp trading entry powered by Lighter, allowing users to trade perpetual contracts and tokenized stock assets directly within the wallet, using USDG as the pricing asset.

As an investor in Lighter, there were previous market expectations for a collaboration between Robinhood and Lighter, but some users were concerned that Robinhood would choose to build its own Perp products, leading to a competitive relationship with Lighter. However, the latest announcement indicates that Robinhood ultimately chose to integrate perpetual contract trading capabilities with Lighter.

For Lighter, this signifies a qualitative shift in its role — it is no longer just an independent DEX but is gradually becoming the default execution layer and liquidity engine within the Robinhood Wallet ecosystem, allowing Robinhood's large user base to access its services more conveniently.

Recently, well-known trader Ansem, who has gained attention due to the surge of his own Meme token, gave a very high evaluation of this: "The collaboration between Lighter and Robinhood seems to be aiming for something big."

Restructuring the Token Economic Model: Buyback Tokens to be Fully Destroyed

Another key action from Lighter recently is the announcement on July 1 regarding the update of its token economic model, which further strengthens the pricing logic of LIT as a "cash flow-driven asset."

In this update, Lighter explicitly stated that all protocol revenue would be used to buy back LIT, and the buyback mechanism is upgraded from "programmatic purchase" to "permanent destruction." As of that time, Lighter had cumulatively repurchased approximately 15.5 million LIT, accounting for about 6.26% of the circulating supply, and will execute the first on-chain destruction after Q2 ends.

Simultaneously, the staking mechanism for LIT was redesigned. After early subsidies from pre-TGE revenue, the team announced that it would gradually introduce ecological tokens for staking rewards and set the target annual yield at about 6%. With the current staking scale of about 125 million LIT, this corresponds to an annual distribution of about 7.5 million tokens.

Within this framework, LIT's economic model begins to present a relatively clear structure: one end is sustained stable protocol revenue ➡️ full buyback and destruction ➡️ reduction of circulating supply; the other end is staking rewards aimed at long-term holders ➡️ directed distribution in the form of ecological tokens.

Data analyst ajey.lit, who tracks the Perp DEX market, posted a comparison of LIT and HYPE's buyback data, which yielded quite surprising results. Compared to HYPE, which has always emphasized revenue and buybacks, LIT's buyback strength is even relatively stronger — as of now, Lighter's buyback of tokens accounts for about 6.26% of the circulating supply, significantly higher than Hyperliquid (HYPE) at about 3.34%; if calculated based on the buyback amount and market capitalization, Lighter's buyback proportion is about 4%, also higher than the latter's approximately 1.8%.

Change in Chip Structure: Handovers Completed, A Lighter Load is Better

If we look at the three lines of compliance, distribution, and economic model together, we find that the rise of LIT is not driven by a single catalyst but is a typical process of "delayed pricing + collective revaluation."

The premise of all this is that the bottom chips of LIT have been fully washed out during the previous sustained decline.

Since the TGE of LIT, due to the overall sluggish cryptocurrency market, fierce competition in the Perp DEX space, and the continuous exit of early airdrop users, LIT has formed a typical downward selling pressure structure; meanwhile, market-making and long-term funds have steadily accumulated at the low levels, resulting in a gradual shift of chips from "loose distribution" to "concentrated accumulation." This process can essentially be understood as a change of hands at the bottom.

As Lighter’s fundamentals gradually improve, the market structure of LIT has also switched from being dominated by "unwinding and selling pressure" to being primarily governed by "incremental capital pricing." In this structural change, the marginal improvement of the fundamentals truly begins to be amplified. Additionally, this structure also overlaps with the concentrated existence of short positions, with some short positions accumulating during a long period of sideways movement and downtrend expectation, and when the price begins to break through key ranges, the market liquidity shows a significant asymmetry — insufficient selling pressure above, while short covering becomes a new source of buying, thus amplifying price elasticity.

In summary, the recent rise of LIT should not be understood as driven by a single factor, but rather as a combined effect from three levels: first, the fundamentals shift from uncertainty to verifiability; second, the chip structure transitions from selling pressure dominance to completed handover; third, the shorts and liquidity structure inversely amplify elasticity.

LIT did not "suddenly become strong," it is just being "gradually repriced."

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